My purpose: to have people see the piles of crap that we step over and around as we struggle in our daily lives. Like the lighthouse, I am shining a light on issues of today through commentary, posting of articles and information, and in general offering a closer look at details the press "forgets" to tell us. Call me a different voice in the darkness.
After all, change happens when the felt pain of NOT CHANGING becomes greater than the perceived pain of CHANGING.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Camp Followers

Camp FollowersBy Patrick J. BuchananOctober 24, 2008

Perhaps the only institution in America whose approval rating isbeneath that of Congress is the media.

Twice last weekend, Biden grimly warned at closed-door meetingsthat a great crisis is coming early in the term of President Obama:

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world testsBarack Obama like they did John Kennedy. ... Remember I said itstanding here if you don't remember anything else I said ... we'regonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test themettle of this guy."

A "generated crisis"? By whom? Moscow? Beijing? Teheran?

This is an astonishing statement from a chairman of the ForeignRelations Committee who has access to the same intelligence asGeorge Bush. Joe was warning of a crisis like the Berlin Wall ofJuly 1961, where JFK called for a tripling of the draft and ordereda call-up of reserves, or the missile crisis where U.S. pilots likeJohn McCain were minutes away from bombing nuclear missile sites inCuba and killing the Russians manning them.

Is Russia about to move on the Crimea? Is Israel about to launchair strikes on Iran's nuclear sites? What is Joe talking about?

If one assumes Joe is a serious man, we have a right to know.

Instead, what we got was Obama's airy dismissal of Joe's words as a"rhetorical flourish" and a media -- rather than demanding that Joehold a press conference -- acting as Obama surrogates parroting thetalking points that Joe was just saying that new presidents alwaysface tests.

Had John McCain made that hair-raising statement, he would havebeen accused of fear mongering about a new 9/11. The media wouldhave run with the story rather than have smothered it.

Nice historical reference. Except when the market crashed in 1929,Hoover was president, and there was no television.

Can one imagine what the press would have done to Sarah Palin hadshe exhibited such ignorance of history. Or Dan Quayle?

Joe gets a pass because everybody likes Joe.

Fine. But Joe also has a record of 36 years in the Senate.

Has anyone ever asked Joe about his own and his party's role incutting off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the greatest strategicdefeat in U.S. history and the Cambodian holocaust? Has anyone everasked Joe about the role he and his party played in working toblock Reagan's deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and SDI,which Gorbachev concedes broke the Soviets and won the Cold War?

In the most crucial vote he ever cast -- to give Bush a blank checkfor war in Iraq -- Joe concedes he got it wrong.

Is Joe's record of having been wrong on Vietnam, wrong in the ColdWar, wrong on the Iraq War, less important than whether Sarah Palintried to get fired a rogue-cop brother-in-law who Tasered her10-year old nephew to "teach him a lesson"?

"I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of mycolleagues know," says Joe humbly. Given his record, it isunderstandable Joe has forgotten so much of it.

Saturday, the New York Times did a takeout on Cindy McCain thatdelved back into her problem with prescription pills. Yet whenHillary's campaign manager, Mark Penn, brought up Obama's cocaineuse on "Hardball," he was savaged by folks for whom the Times isthe gold standard.

The people apparently had a "right to know" of Bush's old DUIarrest a week before the 2000 election, but no right to know abouthow and when Obama was engaged in the criminal use of cocaine.

The media cannot get enough of the "Saturday Night Live"impersonations of Palin as a bubblehead. News shows pick up theTina Fey clips and run them and run them to the merriment of all.

Can one imagine "Saturday Night Live" doing weekly send-ups ofMichelle Obama and her "I've never been proud" of my country, this"just downright mean" America, using a black comedienne to mimicand mock her voice and accent?

"Saturday Night Live" would be facing hate crime charges.

How do we know? When the New Yorker ran a cartoon of Michelle in anAngela-Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, New Yorkereditors had to go on national television to swear they were notmocking Michelle, but the conservatives who have so caricaturedMichelle and The Messiah.

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About Me

I am an immigrant who arrived in '61, and chose to become a citizen. In that process, I also gave up being a citizen from my birth country, choosing to be "in for a penny, in for a pound".
I am an American. not an Americant, and although I have lost it all a few times, I believe the boot strap is still the best tool to pull one's self up with.